Worth it to upgrade a 250GB 5400rpm to 160gb 7200rpm?

I'm thinking about upgrading to a 7200rpm on my new laptop but I have a few questions.

For the 250GB I plan on buying an external enclosure to make use of it, but I'm wondering if the USB 2.0 transfer speeds are good enough so that using the external drive won't be a hassle if I want to do things like store movies or such on them.

Also, is it worth the $100 to get the 7200rpm drive in general? And how difficult is it to install software on the new drive

 

Read the stickies: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=288101

USB2.0 speeds are normally acceptable for the average user for copying files. If you want to run demanding software from them, then it's a different matter.

 

usually, there is little performance improvement from 5400 to 7200. my educated guess puts it at 20% avg, assuming the drives are of the same size. i remember people talking about how the 320gb 5400rpm is up to the same speed of the 200gb 7200rpm because the 320gb had higher platter density (honestly, don't know what that means), but yea, so you'll see a small improvement. my advice is to wait and get an ssd drive, as they're the way of the future .

about the usb, i have a wd my book 500gb and i can tell you its blazing fast (faster than my internal hard drive for sure.) however its not usb powered(power adapter req)

 

(SATA ?, Which brand - current 250GB ?)
If you are upgrading to the WD1600BEKT or the 7K320 160GB, then you'll see a performance boost (better Read/Write times, better loading times, and lower access times). Both of the above drives have a single 160GB platter.
If not on a budget, check out their big brothers, the WD3200BEKT and the 7K320 320GB.

 

If you go with one of the drives Andy recommended you'll notice about 10-20% performance boost in hard drive intensive situations, like booting, launching applications or loading files.